Funeral homes

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Funeral homes are dealing with changes from the covid 19 pandemic...putting a lot of stress on family owned businesses.fox 55's chris mullooly is live in fort wayne.

So chris..what's the biggest change?for the directors its not having more than 10 in one room.the directors are now having to try and balance between taking care of the family and abiding by the law...a tough situation when a family member passes away.

"funeral homes are gonna have to be more cost effective in their operations"its a reality for thomas drzewiecki..the owner of thomas funeral home in garrett indiana says its tough to balance keeping up business during the pandemic... but helping out families."we just try to have a dignified service for the family at the time of the death"those services are tougher for both sides.indiana funeral homes are listed as an essentail service by governor eric holcomb...but services can't have more than 10 people inside.the staff coutns as part of that so i have gone to just myself workigns ometiems so the family can have more members at the servicewhich creates problems for visitation... and leaving families to decide whether to skip the service entirely and go striaght to burial... or get creative.visitation so like 1-1:30 and everyone leaves and disinfect happens then the next group of 10 comes indrzewiecki says the indiana state board of funeral and cemetary service has created guidelines to follow... have had overwhelming amount of webinars on how to deal with handling coid positive boies or just bodies of any type fduring the pandemicbut says not everyone... follows the rules.everyone tries to abide by the law but you always have ppl who are the outlaw and say oh we can do this for ya just to get someones business the director says they're doing all they can do ensure everyones safety during the funeral processions... but say its hard with so much unknown.

Reporting live ... chris mullooly... fox 55 news.